Inside Hollywood: Kitchen Cupboard Confidential

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“Because it is so big, and my father lives in Chicago, he shipped it. So on New Year’s Eve, before my husband and I went out, we received this big box. We were so excited that we opened it up and got it right out. It’s race-car red. We made whipped cream and got strawberries and Champagne and had our own New Year’s festivity. We do that every year now.”

“When I was growing up, my dad made sure that I could cook. It was really important to him that I learn those skills. When I was in high school, he would give me a knife and say, ‘Chop this, and don’t stop chopping until I say so.’ Even as a younger kid, I would prep in the kitchen even though I was totally spoiled with good food. My dad would make me anything!”

“I have made really simple things for my dad. I put together a Caprese salad one day, but I have yet to make an actual meal for my father. That will be the next stepping stone.”

Oren Moverman: Director of Rampart
“My kitchen has recently been stripped of the past. I have a child who has been diagnosed with celiac disease, so we had to make our house gluten-free. Everything in the kitchen has been replaced. It’s looking toward the future, not the past.”

“But there is one thing that remains: It’s a cup. We are really good at breaking things—glasses, plates—we specialize in that. But the cup has survived. It’s one of those completely uninteresting cheesy ones with flowers on it that tries to look artistic but isn’t. I take a lot of comfort in this cup. It’s the go-to cup for a late-in-the-day Turkish coffee. I got it a year after I came to this country from Israel in 1989. It’s my immigrant cup.”

“I try not to stay in the past too much. But in the films I’ve made, the past looms large in every character’s story. The past is just a bitter cup of memories. I can’t get more symbolic than that.”

Ali Landry: Host of upcoming Hollywood Moms Night and actress, Bella
“My object is my grandmother’s rolling pin. I’m from Lousiana, and everything there is all about food. My grandmother lived with us, and she baked everything from scratch. No one can touch any of my grandmother’s dishes.”

“My favorite were cookies called gâteaux sec. They were vanilla cookies with a homemade chocolate sauce that would dry up on the top so that it was crispy. They were delicious. We would sit at the kitchen table and she would make the dough from scratch, take out the rolling pin, and roll it out. We would have to cut the cookie shape out with a coffee cup, the same coffee cup she probably had had for 50 years.”

“I have the best memories of my grandmother with that rolling pin. Every single Friday, my grandmother and my aunts would go to my mom’s beauty salon, which was right next to my house, and they would get their hair done. And then my grandmother would cook the meal for the day.”

“My grandmother passed the rolling pin on to me. It has a beautiful patina to it and she had it forever. If it could talk, I’m sure it would tell us some very interesting things.”

A. O. Scott: Film critic, The New York Times
“Troy, Ohio, where my father grew up, was for much of the 20th century home to the Hobart factory that made KitchenAid appliances. My grandparents did not work for the company, but it was the source of the town’s prosperity, and the machines in their kitchen were an expression of local pride.”

“The brand still exists, though Hobart is no longer the parent company, and the factory is long gone from Troy, as is my family. I’m not much for automation when I cook. But I do cherish my blue-and-white mixer, with 10 speeds and a steel lever to raise and lower the bowl. A wedding present more than 20 years ago, it’s a link between generations and a symbol of American culinary ingenuity.”